death metal in the dentist's office

By Matthew Ward | Sunday, Mar 29, 2009

I went to the dentist a couple of times recently...  was worried that the slight pain in one of my back teeth would turn out to be some kind of horrible cavity.  I still have nightmares about this one time I went to the dentist in the US, without health insurance, and paid some kind of ungodly sum of money to get a root canal.  Maybe I didn't need a root canal, but they said I did, and I was about to move to Taiwan, so I figured that I didn't want to get some horrible toothache as soon as I showed up. 

Anyway, it cost so much that I've actually blocked out the actual amount, but it was somewhere between 500 and 1000 dollars.  That taught me a good lesson:  now whenever I'm going back to the US, I make good and sure to go to the dentist and have them take care of my teeth before I have to be exposed to the US medical system. 

I've heard a couple of horror stories about Japanese dentists too, but at least they don't take you to the cleaner's, moneywise.  The funny thing is, though, in the years I've lived in Japan, I've never had a bad experience in any kind of medical situation.  Whenever I think I need medical attention, I have a simple routine:  I take a good look at one of the multiple clinics in my neighborhood and find one that looks nice, bright, clean and modern.  Then, I rehearse describing whatever my symtoms are in my head before going in, because one thing you cannot expect is that you'll be able to communicate in English.  Finally, I make sure that I have my handy little national health card on me.  This has worked for me multiple times, and I've gotten good, quick, and cheap care every time. 

So, this time, they looked at the tooth and explained that it wasn't a cavity, but rather that the tooth had been filled before and the filling had partially fallen out and I was getting some nerve pain when I was eating.  So, they added some more filling type stuff on it and now it seems fine.  It cost all of 1200 yen too.  They asked me to come back in a week to see if the treatment had worked, and after about 10 minutes of poking around and asking me questions, they charged me 400 yen more.  There's not much you can buy in Japan for 400 yen, but apparently you can get a follow-up visit to the dentist. 

The funny thing was, the first time I went in, they were playing some heavy metal program in the office, so while they had me in the chair putting the filling stuff on my tooth, they had Slayer, of all things, cranked out pretty loudly.  This is the kind of thing that cracks me up about Japan:  can you imagine hearing Slayer in the dentist's office at home?  I've always loved how Japan doesn't associate musical genre with situation/subculture/age, etc (see my "punk rock in the supermarket" blog below for more musings on this), so instead of musak or Air Supply or whatever you usually hear in the dentist's office, you get some guy screaming about Satan instead.  Refreshing, I gotta say. 

It was kinda weird, though:  they had the filling thing buzzing away, and then this death metal playing.  Death metal in the dentist's office, gotta love it!  

Matthew Ward's Profile

Late 30's, have lived in Asia for a lot of my life.

Interests: Music, politics, linguistics, learning languages, culture, food, traveling.

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